Category: Blog

  • Beijing

    This week I was in Beijing working on a PR campaign to build awareness of the Ubiquiti Networks brand in China.  Beijing’s development pace has been astounding and the quality standards of their airport, shopping districts, hotels, and business centers now rival those of Dubai or even Tokyo.  The city is very alive and I…

  • Walk the Walk

    Unfortunately in the world we live in, there are the few that truly create value and then there are the many that prey off the value creation of these few.  One of my favorite movie scenes — from the classic “Hustle and Flow,” about a struggling Memphian (Djay) who enlists the help of a music…

  • BootStrapping Strategies Part 5: The Power of Information Transparency

    One of my favorite movie scenes is from the comedy Office Space about the miserable culture of Initech, a software development company. When the company brings in two so-called “efficiency experts” to restructure its operations, the experts start by interviewing each employee to determine who essentially needs to be replaced.  One of their interviews focuses…

  • A Look into Ubiquiti’s R&D Strategy: Introducing mFI

    Background: In 2001, the IEEE published the initial 802.16d Wimax fixed broadband wireless technology standard hoping it would bridge the digital divide amongst the underserved world.  Intel heavily backed Wimax and envisioned an interoperable technology standard supported by a consortium of chipset and system manufacturing companies that would eventually drive hardware price points down to…

  • BootStrapping Strategies Part 4: Building Defensibility

    When Ubiquiti released the NanoStation “customer premise equipment” (CPE) in 2008, it changed the “Wireless Internet Service Provider” (WISP) market.  WISP’s (much like Ubiquiti) typically started as bootstrapped entrepreneurial ventures that were cash flow constrained.  With the introduction of the disruptive cost/performance NanoStation CPE, Ubiquiti provided a near zero time return on capital investment to…

  • BootStrapping Strategies Part 3: Product Development Models: Predictive vs. Reactive

    In Part 2, I talked about Ubiquiti Networks’ beginnings that started with a flawed business strategy and eventually evolved to define a market.  Before I tell the follow-on story, I would like to preface it with a discussion of how I see two kinds of product development models:  “predictive” and “reactive.” A predictive development model…

  • Commoditization and Leverage

    When a technology product is brought to market, it is typically the result of several partners working together.  For instance, an Android phone is the result of companies like HTC or Samsung productizing Google’s underlying mobile operating system platform and partnering with mobile carriers such as AT&T and Verizon who use their networks and stores…

  • Bootstrapping Strategies Part 2: “Fatigue Makes Cowards of Us All” — Vince Lombardi

    My fitness trainer often shouts this phrase to me whenever I am beginning to hit the wall during workouts (Terry Canon, respect).  The motivation of the phrase is simple – when we get tired or when we are faced with adversity; our mental strength and concentration are put to the test.  And those that have…

  • Bootstrapping Strategies Part 1: The Compromise between Today and Tomorrow

    Perhaps something of an oddity amongst publicly traded tech companies, Ubiquiti Networks was bootstrapped with no operational funding from inception up to the IPO.  For a software company, this path is challenging enough.  But, Ubiquiti makes hardware.  And with making hardware comes the additional financial burden of funding larger and larger manufacturing expenses as the business grows. People…

  • New Office

    Ubiquiti’s Silicon Valley branch moved to a larger facility in San Jose last month.  Attached are photos showing the property after our design build out. We had some specific goals we wanted to achieve with the design: 1.      Build an engineer’s dream work environment.  It’s a sleek, modern look where no expense was spared for our lab…